Lecture Kicks Off International Particle Physics Conference

EVENT:
Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek will give a public talk titled "The Universe Is a Strange Place" to start the weeklong 14th annual international conference on Supersymmetry and the Unification of Fundamental Interactions (SUSY06) sponsored by UC Irvine. Wilczek, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will use a combination of facts, pictures and jokes to discuss the fundamental theory of how matter behaves and how it reveals a universe that is both strange and beautiful. Wilczek also will discuss recent discoveries that indicate the world is even stranger than scientists think and how they are addressing those challenges.

WHEN:
8 p.m. Monday, June 12
Conference runs June 12-17

WHERE:
Irvine Barclay Theatre, UCI campus. Map: www.uci.edu/campusmap
Conference will be held at UCI and at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa

INFORMATION:
Free and open to the public. Reservations to guarantee seats are strongly encouraged and can be made by visiting http://susy06.physics.uci.edu/nobel/reservation.html.

Other conference events require registration. For more information, visit http://susy06.physics.uci.edu/registration.html.

BACKGROUND:
Wilczek, one of the world's most eminent theoretical physicists, won the Nobel Prize in 2004 for work he did as a 21-year-old graduate student at Princeton University. Wilczek and his colleagues discovered asymptotic freedom, a theory that governs the behavior of quarks -- tiny particles that make up protons and neutrons.

SUSY06 is considered the most prestigious annual international meeting devoted to new ideas in particle physics. It will examine a wide range of subjects dealing with the nature of fundamental physics at the highest energies and the cosmos. UCI is partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to sponsor the event. Past conferences have been held in the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, Switzerland and France.

This year's meeting is especially significant because the world's biggest particle accelerator -- the Large Hadron Collider -- is scheduled to begin operating in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2007. This machine has the potential to revolutionize the way scientists view fundamental physics. SUSY06 will include a panel discussion about the collider and will provide a focus for the growing excitement in particle physics and cosmology as scientists discuss new research and plan for the future.

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Contact:
Jennifer Fitzenberger
(949) 824-3969
jfitzen@uci.edu

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